Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
Republican lawmakers talked a big game about their opposition to President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which will strip health care and food stamps from millions while exploding the deficit with tax giveaways to the rich.
So-called “moderate” Republicans claimed to be against the massive Medicaid cuts that will cause millions of low-income Americans to lose their health insurance. And the hard-right “fiscal hawks” crowed about the more than $3 trillion the bill will add to the national deficit—so much that it will spike interest rates and make it more expensive for Americans to borrow money for home or car purchases.
But in the end, they all caved, passing this dumpster fire bill to give Dear Leader a victory—pyrrhic as it appears to be.
Perhaps the biggest coward is GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted for the legislation after getting a “polar payoff” to ensure that her state won’t be hit as hard as others by the massive Medicaid cuts.
After voting for the bill, Murkowski said that she didn’t actually like the legislation and wanted the House to amend it—knowing full well that it was unlikely to happen. Hard to find a more cowardly move than that.
“I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill,” she said.
But Murkowski’s colleague Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave her a run for her money on the coward scale. Hawley had been declaring for months that he wouldn’t vote for any bill that would slash Medicaid.
“I’m not going to vote for Medicaid benefit cuts,” Hawley told reporters earlier this year.
Yet Hawley did just that—and without even needing a kickback like Murkowski’s in exchange for his vote.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin folded and voted for the bill after spending weeks declaring that its deficit busting was immoral and dangerous. Like Hawley, it took nothing for Johnson to prove that his commitment to reducing the deficit was all a ruse.
In the end, cutting taxes for the rich while screwing the poor is more important than anything for the GOP. And the caves were just as obscene over in the House.
There are far too many to list, but for the sake of brevity, here are the worst of the cowards in the House.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska—who isn’t even running for reelection and thus does not need to cave to Trump—voted for the bill after previously saying that the bill’s massive Medicaid cuts were a red line that he would not cross.
“No bill is going to be perfect,” Bacon told reporters to justify his abhorrent cave.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who just a few weeks ago said that the Senate’s deep cuts to Medicaid were a “nonstarter,” also voted for the bill, saying that he hopes the cuts to the life-saving health care program will be delayed down the road. Really.
Meanwhile, Rep. Keith Self of Oklahoma, who on Wednesday called the bill “morally and fiscally bankrupt,” turned around less than a day later and, you guessed it, voted for the legislation.
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio—one of two Republicans to vote against the bill in the House the first time because it added too much to the deficit—voted for the Senate version of the bill that exploded the deficit even more, because he said that Trump made an artificial deadline and time had simply run out for him to fight for more changes.
Davidson told reporters that he put up “as strong of a fight” as he could and that he “hates to reward the Swamp” but couldn’t fight anymore. The true definition of a coward.
And Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who declared that he couldn’t vote for the bill and that there was nothing anyone could say to get him to vote for it, turned around less than a day later and voted for it.
While that is certainly a cowardly act, at least he admitted why he caved so easily.
“Well, we met with President Trump, and he did a masterful job laying out how we could improve it, how he could use his chief executive office—use things to make the bill better,” Norman said.
There’s no greater evidence than that to prove that the GOP is nothing more than a cult dedicated to Trump.
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